A group of British teachers have discovered a way to keep all students from failing:
The word "fail" should be banned from use in classrooms and replaced with the phrase "deferred success" to avoid demoralising pupils, a group of teachers has proposed. Members of the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) argue that telling pupils they have failed can put them off learning for life.A spokesman for the group said it wanted to avoid labelling children. "We recognise that children do not necessarily achieve success first time," he said. "But I recognise that we can't just strike a word from the dictionary," he said.
You just know they really do want to strike that word from the dictionary, don't you?
This is related to the self-esteem tangent I went on, earlier; these teachers are utterly unable to conceive of children whose self-esteem might lie in non-academic pursuits. They're also unable to comprehend how children might understand that a "fail" grade in a course doesn't mean they're failures overall. These teachers are horrified of the word "fail" because they believe the self-esteem of a student will be - nay, should be - defined by academic labels; they believe that what they say to a student will trump all other sources of self-esteem.
What arrogance.
Update: Joanne, as always, summarizes things perfectly: "Some British teachers want to ban the word "fail" in classrooms, replacing it with 'deferred success'...How, um, deferred do they think their students are?"
That's right up there with the Fark commenter who suggested that being turned down for a job should be called "deferred employment."